Where can I find pastry flour in stores? (Mesa, AZ)
I apologize if this question has been asked before, but I'm having a difficult time finding pastry flour in my local stores. I ordered some Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour from Amazon but wasn't happy with the texture or flavor of the pie crust this flour produced.
Searching local grocery stores, including AJ's, has failed me. Does anyone have suggestions on where I can find pastry flour in my area? If not, does anyone have any experience ordering directly from King Arthur?
Posted Nov 12, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC
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I'm not in your area, but I've never seen pastry flour in any brick-and-mortar stores either. I've ordered directly from King Arthur Flour and have always been happy with the pie crust I made with both their pastry flour and their pastry flour blend. It's always turned out nice tender crust that tastes good (I use Rose Levy Beranbaum's cream cheese pie crust recipe).
However, if you don't want to order pastry flour online, Rose Levy Beranbaum offers a couple of options for substitutions on the left-hand side of this page of her latest book - either substituting a mixture of two-thirds all-purpose flour to one-third cake flour (by weight), or if using only all-purpose flour, add a little bit of sugar. I've tried the first option, and it worked. I might give the sugar thing a try too once I run out of my pastry flour.
Thanks for the advice! I've just ordered some pastry flour from King Arthur's website. I've used a mixture of AP flour and cake flour before with pretty good results but was hoping to see if pastry flour made any noticeable difference. I haven't heard of the cream cheese pie crust before, but I'll have to read up on it after the holidays, so thank you for the link!